3 Multi-Sensory Marketing Musts: How to Have a Love Affair with Your Customers

Tara-Nicholle Nelson
, SubscriberHow to tap into transformation, for your business and your life.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day CEO Kevin Rutherford

As a marketer and entrepreneur, I’ve long been fascinated with the concept of a lovemark - a term created by Saatchi and Saatchi President Kevin Roberts to describe brands to which customers are loyal beyond all reason, beyond all utility the product actually presents. And I’ve long worked with clients and companies to get them to incorporate lovemark-dom into their aspirations for our marketing campaigns.

On top of driving traffic, purchases and time onsite, my position is that Transformational Businesses should also be aiming to create a two-way love affair with the customers they serve: a love affair based on an authentic, deep commitment to those customers’ lives and dreams.

So, I jumped at the opportunity to talk with Caldrea CEO Kevin Rutherford at this year’s LOHAS Forum, in part because he sits at the helm of a brand that many a Transformational Consumer already holds dear: Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day household cleaning products. [If you’re a novice to the brand, here’s all you need to know before placing an order: Lemon Verbena Countertop Spray. Carry on.]

Mrs. Meyer’s has all the eco-friendly street cred you’d expect from a natural household product line, from a cruelty-, ammonia- and phosphate-free policy, to a focus on biodegradability and raw plant ingredients like olive, coconut, corn and soy. Despite the lack of chemicals, this line of products competes with the heavy-hitters in its space for effictiveness, and bests many of them in terms of brand love. Customers and analysts alike give rave reviews on Amazon, TreeHugger, Apartment Therapy and the Kitchen - and the brand itself has received critical acclaim in outlets like Fast Company and the Wall Street Journal.

I spoke with Rutherford at length about Mrs. Meyer’s and its love affair with Transformational Consumers, and he made two things crystal-clear: the feelings are mutual, and they are based in no small part on the products’ intentional design to activate as many of users’ five senses as possible.

Here are three key takeaways from Rutherford’s thoughts on how Mrs. Meyer’s gets customers to fall - and stay - in love with their products:

1. Learn what they love: “There's no question that the real love for Mrs Myers, the real passion and obsession with the brand is [inspired by] the fragrance. The other rational benefits (we fortunately do very well) are of course the efficacy of the product -- we're as good as or better than other natural brands -- our commitment to the planet, and so forth. However, the fragrance is where the emotional connection is.

Interestingly, we looked at our Facebook page for a ten-day timeframe to see how many times people would use the word 'love' or a heart icon in association with the brand and we found 78 instances in a ten-day period. We were looking for insights around the brand and what we found was that 78 people expressed love - usually in association with the fragrance, but sometimes toward the design, or our commitment to the planet.”

Mrs. Meyer's Product Line

2. Create a lovable product, tailored to your audience. “Our company is at least 70% female. [Note: Mrs. Meyer's was founded by Monica Nassif, the daughter of the real-life Mrs. Meyer.] 3 out of 5 of the management team members are female - the reason I mention that is that our company mirrors our target consumer. We design our product for ourselves. We don't talk about our target consumer as abstract, we talk about it as 'us.' We share the values of our consumer, we design the product for us, hoping that if you're like us, you'll probably love it too. If I were to describe a psychographic I'd say the Mrs. Meyer's consumers are informed, healthy moms, or informed, healthy women, in general.

I came from the Kashi Company, so the analogy I use is that natural, organic foods still HAVE to taste good or people won't adopt into that lifestyle, so you can't compromise on that. So how do you make it taste good, but still be super healthy?